May 30, 2009

Is Heather still gone?

Normally I try to not write updates close together, mainly because I don’t want people to get annoyed with me. But yesterday was so packed I thought I should write one while the day was still fresh in my mind… And let me put it this way, it being fresh in my mind means I haven’t been able to block it out yet, which isn’t good. I’m exaggerating slightly.

So with Heather in Beijing I’m realizing how much I depend on her every day. For example, our family was invited to a Chinese friend’s wedding and even though Heather is out of town I wanted to go with Sydney. So I planned to have our babysitter watch Aubrey while Sydney and I attended our first Chinese wedding. Which normally wouldn’t be a big deal, but it wouldn’t be a big deal because the Batman (a.k.a. Heather) to my Robin would be by my side to help me. Well we weren’t supposed to leave until 11:30 am and I had a list of things I wanted to do before I got out the door. What I remembered about myself is that I’m a terrible procrastinator without Heather. So pretty much I sat around till the last minute then rushed to get ready to attend a wedding. Half of the things I wanted to do were left undone and the other half were done poorly at best. Heather loves being on-time and I need that in my life.

When we got to the wedding it started off really well. Chinese weddings usually take place in a restaurant with tons of people and food, no complaints there. They even fire off multiple confetti cannons which loudly launch confetti out of a handheld cannon thing. It usually scares me half to death, but is tons of fun to watch. Sydney sat in my lap as we watched the MC present our friends for the first time and go through all the announcements and what not. Sydney even joined in with the rest of us as we clapped every 30 seconds or so (I would explain what we clapped for, but the service was in Chinese). Anyways, after 30 minutes of that Sydney started to get bored and wanted to run around. When we started eating lunch all she wanted was to drink Coke, which she masterfully broke me down into giving her. After a little more than an hour of trying to take care of Sydney we said goodbye to our friends and went home. I was so exhausted and again I present this question “WHERE IS HEATHER????”

Sorry this is so long, but that night we had my teacher and her boyfriend over for dinner which was a really fun time. They love our girls and danced with them for a while, which both Sydney and Aubrey enjoyed. We ordered some Chinese food and chatted about life which was nice. I noticed Sydney looking guilty as all get out and discovered she had peed in our living room. I swear she has been perfect lately, until Heather left. When it was the girl’s bedtime, I dragged a mattress out into the living room and set up the couch as a bed for a little urban camp out. We watched Dora the Explorer for like 3 hours in Chinese (which Sydney requested) and ate popcorn. And hearing that don’t you just think “I wish I was there”. Since we were camping out in the living room I turned the lights off so that Sydney who was laying on the couch (which she requested) and I on the mattress on the floor could go to bed. And in the dark Sydney says to me “Daddy let’s talk together”, which was precious (even though that was only a tool to stay up longer). She told me a story and we both fell asleep.